We are an environmental and social enterprise based in Hackney, delivering a range of food growing and sustainable gardening workshops in schools, housing associations and various other community groups. These can be in the form of one-off sessions, or long projects which run for several months.

growing people have successfully helped groups set up food-growing initiatives all over London, working with diverse members of the community. The aim in all these workshops is to provide participants with the skills needed to successfully create and maintain a productive space, however small the land or concrete area available to them.

We believe that food-growing can be a valuable part of young peoples’ education, and we are passionate about sharing knowledge and skills which can enable more people in cities to grow their own, whether they have a garden, patio, balcony, or window sill. Our gardening methods are entirely organic and chemical-free.

Archive for March, 2012

Safi spends a huge amount of time drawing – which we love. But it also means that because every single crayon in her enormous box has become several little baby crayons, the flat has been taken over by nearly unusable bits of broken Crayola showing up everywhere: inside my shoes, the washing machine, our bed…and they are always the first thing to be chucked all over the floor in angry protest at not being allowed to pour water in the Marmite jar or when asked to relinquish one of the four spoons being used for potion-making.

So partly under the guise of “this looks like a fun thing to do” but mainly because I’m sick of spending half my day picking shards of wax off the floor, we made these. They work just like normal crayons and can even do multi-coloured squiggles, so the three of us can still do as much drawing together as we like, but the best thing about them is that there are only eight of them. Brilliant.

You will need: broken crayons, cupcake moulds, one compliant toddler who doesn’t mind you nicking her toys, oven on gas mark 1 for fifteen minutes.

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…the way my clever students at St Mary Magdelene Primary School use egg shells, empty tins and crisp packets for starting off seedlings. Happy days. Speaking of which, now is the time for starting more or less everything (keep the beans, tomatoes and pepper seedlings inside until May though, and hold off on sowing pumpkins, squash and courgettes at all until then).

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The one on the left is me. This budget little flyer is dotted around Hackney’s shops and cafes and has earned me rather a lot of good clients and I’m very grateful to it. The one on the right is obviously not me – in fact I have no idea who he is and he wasn’t there last week but he made me very smiley indeed when I happened upon him at the Pacific Social Club on Clarence Road this afternoon. I might just save his number in case things with Reda don’t work out.